Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jafferis

Byron Au Yong composes songs of dislocation that combine voices with Asian, European, and handmade instruments. His cross-disciplinary, intercultural initiatives have been featured in festival, concert, and site-specific locations as diverse as the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Tokyo Art Museum, and Seattle Aquarium. Examples include Salt Lips Touching premiered outside a Confucian Temple at the Jeonju Sanjo Festival, Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas performed in 64 waterways throughout the Pacific Northwest, and Forbidden Circles, presented at the Fukuoka Gendai Hogaku Festival and International House of Japan. Au Yong’s music is available on Periplum, New World Records, and other independent labels. He teaches at Cornish College of the Arts and serves on a Community Advisory Committee for the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

Aaron Jafferis has performed his hip hop poetry at Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center, and the National Poetry Slam Championships, where he was the 1997 Open Rap Slam champion. His hip hop musical Kingdom (music by Ian Williams) premiered at The Old Globe in 2009, won a 2008 Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the award for Most Promising New Musical at the 2006 New York Musical Theatre Festival. Described as “Raw…hard hitting…razor-edged…taps into pure blasts of emotion, like a needle dropped straight on the brain.” San Diego Union-Tribune. Other works include No Lie (Nuyorican Poets Café, H.E.R.E., Long Wharf Theatre, Passage Theatre, International Festival of Arts & Ideas) and Shakespeare: The Remix (TheatreWorks, St. Louis Black Rep, Capital Rep, Zachary Scott Theatre, Collective Consciousness).